Letter 678. To the same

Annecy, 6 December, 1625. Vive > Jésus!

If you reread my letter [of October 25] I think you will see that I had no intention of accusing you either of untruthfulness or of exaggeration; for I remember distinctly what I meant to convey by quoting your words was, that it would be impossible with such grace to have this darkness, weakness, and want of feeling in the superior part of your soul, but only in the inferior. Really! dearest daughter, I never thought such a thing of you nor anything approaching it. Oh! let us not talk any more about it. God has given me too clear a knowledge of your heart to allow of my thinking so, and if you saw my heart as clearly you could have had no such thought about me. Certainly, you have every reason to thank God and to give yourself wholly and humbly into His good keeping, seeing that He has endowed you with an interior disposition of soul so stable, so desirable, and altogether so much to my liking. Persevere in this state. Live in loving trustfulness and in the accomplishing of His holy will, and do it in no other way than simply by fidelity to observance. Oh, how priceless is this state! May the great God keep you init! All the more will He do so inasmuch as you make no foundation for it except in Him alone and in the practice of solid virtue. No; you have not done wrong in burning the letters written to me, nor in looking at them. So you see I cannot do without you; for God has made all intercourse with you so agreeable to me. I bless Him for it! Greetings to all our dear sisters. Indeed, I have not yet had time to open their letters, but I will answer them all in time.

The letter written to this address was sent to the Father Rector of Chambéry, who at once saw the mistake and sent it safely back to me. To tell the truth, I was very much mortified on perceiving it. I am so extremely overburdened with business that I can hardly master it; yet still, thank God, I manage to see each sister in the monastery every month.

How touched I am by your charity to our sisters of Riom! Would to God that we had the means of helping them! But our houses near us here need so much now that we have to consider the advisability of borrowing from M. Michel to procure provisions. But I hope God will come to our assistance. And this is why, notwithstanding our having no money here, we still beg of Sieur Guichard to give you a hundred crowns to send to Riom, trusting that between this and the time the carrier returns God will send us wherewith to repay him. I tell you again that certainly one family is, as a rule, sufficient responsibility for a Lyons Superior, but, on account of these foundations, it is difficult to keep to a rule at their beginning. Yrs. etc.